Capital City Trip, Day Five

Day five: Thursday, July 3: We were up by 7 a.m., and rode our bikes after breakfast as usual. It was sunny but cool this morning. Campers were rolling in for the weekend, bringing with them lots of kids and dogs. Kids were everywhere, riding bikes, wading in plastic pools, and having battles with squirt guns. One family not only had several kids, but they also had three dogs, all different breeds.

As the day wore on, our quiet camping area got noisier with children, like a neigboring one who kept blowing the ooga-ooga horn on his bike.

During my cool-down walk, I took along my camera and snapped a couple of photos of the enormous stand of poison ivy (see above). You can tell how tall it is...Hubbie is dwarfed as he stands on the other side of the pine tree, far enough away from the tree-like vine to not be infected by it. He is highly allergic to the plant and has had several bouts with it that required a doctor's attention.

This morning, Hubbie went to the WDCS and picked up the kids photos at one-hour, and we purused them to see what kind of a job the kids had done. They did very well. I sorted the photos according how I wanted to evaluate them during the session today.

When we got to the session, we learned that several kids would not be attending on Friday, so we hurried to work in the darkroom, making 5x7 enlargements of the kids' black and white portrait shots.

After that, the kids constructed viewfinders. These are made from large oatmeal boxes painted black on the inside. A piece of wax paper is taped down over the box opening, and then black poster board is fashioned into a long tube around the box and extending about a foot above the rim of the box. Using a push pin, a hole is drilled into the bottom of the box. When a person looks into the black tube while outdoors, negative images (upside down and reversed) are projected onto the wax paper screen. Kids who provided oatmeal boxes took their viewfinders home with them.

By this time, the session was nearly over, and I didn't get the opportunity to discuss their color photos with them after all.

On our way home, a thunderstorm cropped up. Mother managed to get the canvas lawn chairs folded up and leaning against the camper, but they still got wet.

After supper, we rode bikes again. All we saw this time was four Air Force planes flying in formation.

Later, it was Skipbo time, and tonight we each won a game.